


I'll wait

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 12:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18623011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: "I'll wait for you." SQ as alwaysAsked by emettkaysworld via tumblr





	I'll wait

_“I will wait for you.”_

It was a promise neither of them had ever said aloud but it still hung heavily around them both; like inky collars that rose phantom fingers towards their lips every time the spoke. Codded and riddled and still so present they felt as if they bit into their skin.

Regina couldn’t help but wonder if that was the reason why Emma’s initial need to keep herself distanced from her had grown so much over time. She wondered if she too needed the same in order to be able to breathe.

Fingers searching for her own pulse point in an almost compulsive need, they skimmed over slightly reddish skin: abused by the scratches she had caused on herself every time she realized and felt the tapping sensation of nails on her body.  A tic, a trick, one she could also feel on her right side every time she pressed the palm of her hand against it in a halfway clutch that was never good enough to ground her.

_“I’ll wait.”_

They both had said those words at different moments, at different times. Screaming them while not uttering a word; whispering them while there was no one to listen to them. With time, the feelings of such promise felt jumbled, convoluted, lost, and Regina could barely remember when or who, why or which had said it first. There were still moments though, trapped beneath her tongue as she could picture the scent of rain and uncomfortable warm asphalt; a curse that should have never been casted quickly approaching them all. Tinting the air in red and black and loss.

She was able to picture the moment her entire being froze as she promised a future she feared she would never get to see.

And yet, Emma’s eyes had shone as Regina heard the words; abundantly clear, painful almost, while she tried to lunge forward and breathe in on them, get them inside her chest before they were gone in the wind casted by the magic that had risen around them. She had bitten on her tongue, tasting copper and misery as she had turned just in time to stop the cloud, the sound of the bug driving away a noise she had still been able to conjure up every night she had spent back at the forest; heart far too warm on her chest.

She could still feel the words traveling down the veins of her neck, heavy as lead, when she had seen that stare plenty of times after that. Sometimes addled by pain, by loss, by realization, by fear. She had screamed the same words as Emma had disappeared, tears and promises broken in the edge of a blade in which her name had been carved; the depths of the act far too murky for her to be able to breathe. She had feared them null and void when she had found Emma again; the blade so tight between her fingers she almost craved them to bleed. She had seen them again shortly after in Camelot; in the mix of a desperate kiss she had spied on from the corner of her eyes as she too felt tangled in a web of lies and expectations written in faintly illuminated fairy dust.

_“For you.”_

They had written the words in almost touches in the back of their hands and halted hugs and when that didn’t work and barely-there interactions were poisoned with the one conversation they had never allowed them to have Regina pushed forward. Hoping, expecting, like the young starry-eyed girl she had been, that maybe, this time, hoping as an acting would end up somewhere. She had never been too good at it, however, and as she saw how Emma dwindled; crushed under the weight of a title and a destiny that weren’t hers to hold she started to feel that the promise was becoming a two-edged sword; one that would tether her very soul as she kept on waiting, as she kept on hoping.

And yet she kept on saying them, she kept on whispering them every chance she got, still being answered by the quickly weakling responses of Emma’s own magic, of Emma’s own eyes. She kept on waiting and moving forward, crashing and reshaping herself as she did so.

The moment she saw Gideon’s sword digging into Emma’s side, however, she knew she couldn’t do it anymore; the flash of light and magic blinding her as she run, forgetting every single thought she have ever had as she fell to the blonde’s side, forearms burning as she felt the power rushing through her; incandescent, while she tried to close a wound that simply wasn’t there.

“I’ll wait.” She had said, she had heard. But what was the point on waiting if there would never be another page to be written? What was the point of expecting the perfect moment if there was never a second to spare?

She didn’t move back when she was asked to, not even when Emma glanced at her with something akin to need shinning on her irises; bathed in white and gold. She didn’t speak when she was grasped by her shoulders, her fingers digging deeper into Emma’s side as she refused to move. She didn’t react, not until Henry’s own call sliced through the fog that obscured her mind, and then, and only then, she breathed back into the world; her lungs drenched in magic as she shook her head.

“I’m staying.” She said, and there was such a certainty on her voice she felt the ground below her tremble; Emma’s fingers shaking as she rose them, seemingly searching her wrist.

_“I won’t wait.”_

_“I need you, now.”_


End file.
